PCONVERT(1) User Contributed Perl Documentation PCONVERT(1)
NAME
pconvert - convert file formats
SYNOPSIS
pconvert [-check] [-debug] [-gzip] [-option
program=options] [-nono] [-out filename] [-overwrite]
[-newer] [-remove] [-to type] [-verbose] [name ...]
DESCRIPTION
Pconvert determines the type of the files named on the
command line and tries to convert them to a specified type
(defaults to PostScript). It uses internal rules to find a
set of commands which can do the task.
The file type is determined by file extensions. If the
extension in not known or the -check option is given, the
first bytes of the file are examined to infer a type.
Files with extensions .gz or .Z are assumed to be
compressed by gzip(1) or compress(1) respectively and
handled transparently.
OPTIONS
All options may be abbreviated.Boolean options (all
options without arguments) may be negated by prefixing
them with no. For example use -nocheck to enable file
extension checking if your sysadmin had set the default to
-check. See the Getopts::Long manpage for details.
-check Do not trust file extensions when determining
the input file type.
-debug Enables some debug output. Not very useful.
-gzip Compress output with gzip.
-option program=options
Pass options to the filter program program if
used. This option may be repeated any number of
times. The option parsing checks if program is a
known filter. To learn about the valid filters,
run pconvert without arguments.
-nono Do nothing. Just print what would have been done
without -nono.
-out filename
Pconvert normally writes the output to a new
file with the same base name as the input file
and the type appended as extension. This can be
overwritten with the -out option. If filename is
'-', pconvert writes to STDOUT.
-overwrite, -newer
Pconvert does not overwrite existing files
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unless -overwrite or -newer is given. -overwrite
forces overwriting. -newer will overwrite only
if source is newer.
-remove If -remove is set, the original file is removed.
-to type Use type as desired output type. You can get a
list of valid output types when running pconvert
without any arguments.
-verbose Print commands before running them.
EXAMPLES
Here are some examples. Do not be worried about the
absolute paths in the produced commands. Pconvert will
search for the filters on your system. It may find another
pipe, if some of the filters are missing on your system.
Converting image formats
% pconvert -nono -to tiff ~www/pages/icons/LS6.gif
chdir /home/robots/www/pages/icons/
/bin/cat LS6.gif|
/usr/local/image-tools/bin/giftopnm|
/usr/local/image-tools/bin/pnmtotiff>LS6.tiff
If giftopnm is missing, the following plan is generated:
% pconvert -nono -to tiff ~www/pages/icons/LS6.gif
chdir /home/robots/www/pages/icons/
/bin/cat LS6.gif|
/usr/local/image-tools/bin/cjpeg|
/usr/local/image-tools/bin/djpeg -pnm|
/usr/local/image-tools/bin/pnmtotiff>LS6.tiff
Generating images from postscript
% pconvert -nono -to gif pconvert.pod
/bin/cat pconvert.pod|
(/bin/cat > pconvert.$$;/usr/local/ls6/perl/bin/pod2man \
pconvert.$$;/bin/rm pconvert.$$)|
/usr/local/groff-1.09/bin/groff -mandoc|
/usr/local/X11R5/bin/gs -q -sDEVICE=pbmraw -sOutputFile=- -|
/usr/local/image-tools/bin/ppmquant 256|
/usr/local/image-tools/bin/ppmtogif>pconvert.gif
Generating postscript manpages
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% pconvert -nono pconvert.pod
/bin/cat pconvert.pod|
(/bin/cat > pconvert.$$;/usr/local/ls6/perl/bin/pod2man \
pconvert.$$;/bin/rm pconvert.$$)|
/usr/local/groff-1.09/bin/groff -mandoc>pconvert.ps
Building a tar archive from a directory
% pconvert -nono -to TAR -gzip image
/bin/find image -depth -xdev -type f -print|
/usr/local/ls6/unsupported/bin/sun4-sunos/gcpio -Htar -o|
/usr/local/bin/gzip -c>image.tar.gz
Building a tar archive from a MANIFEST file
% pconvert -nono -to TAR -gzip image/MANIFEST
/bin/cat image/MANIFEST|
/bin/awk '{printf "image/%s\n", $1}'|
/usr/local/ls6/unsupported/bin/sun4-sunos/gcpio -Htar -o|
/usr/local/bin/gzip -c>image.tar.gz
ENVIRONMENT
PATH is used in addition to build-in paths to search for
programs.
SEE ALSO
Getopts::Long(3), awk(1), cjpeg(1), compress(1), djpeg(1),
gcpio(1), giftopnm(1), gzip(1), pbmtopgm(1), perl(1),
pgmtopbm(1), pnmtops(1), pnmtotiff(1), ppmquant(1),
ppmtogif(1), tar(1), tifftopnm(1).
EXTENSION
Extension should be pretty easy. Help safe the world:
Please mail your extension to the author.
New types
To add a new type, just append an entry to the %TYPE hash.
Each entry should be a reference to an array containing:
o the name of the type,
o a regular expression which matches the extension,
and
o optionally a regular expression which matches the
start of the file.
Here is the definition of the GIF type:
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GIF => ['\.gif', '^GIF8[79]a'],
Add a conversion rule.
To add a new filter, just append a an array reference to
@RULE. The array should contain the from and to type an
the name of the filter program. Here are some examples:
[GIF => PPM, 'giftopnm'],
[[PPM, PGM, PBM] => GIF, ['ppmquant 256', 'ppmtogif']],
[POD => MAN,
'(cat > %O.$$; pod2man %O.$$; rm %O.$$;)'],
The %O is replaced by the target name (i.e. the name of
the output file).
AUTHOR
Ulrich Pfeifer
11/Apr/96 perl 4